1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid supplying reservoir.
2. Related Art
A replaceable ink cartridge (hereinafter also referred to simply as an “ink cartridge”), which is formed separately from a recording head included in an inkjet recording apparatus in which recording is performed by ejecting an ink to a recording medium (for example, a sheet) and which supplies an ink to the recording head via an ink supply channel, is known.
In many cases of an ink cartridge, an ink absorbing body is mounted in a housing body of the ink cartridge, and the ink absorbing body holds an ink such that the ink becomes dense in the vicinity of an ink supply opening from which the ink is supplied to a recording head and the ink becomes non-dense at the side of an atmospheric communication opening which causes the interior of the ink cartridge to communicate with the atmosphere when the ink cartridge is attached in the inkjet recording apparatus.
In this type of ink cartridge, a packaging mode in which the ink supply opening and the atmospheric communication opening are sealed by a sealing member is used in preparation for leakage of an ink at the time of physical distribution. For example, the sealing state of the ink cartridge is maintained by carrying out adhesion or thermal bonding of the sealing member for peripheral edge portions of the ink supply opening and the atmospheric communication opening.
The aforementioned packaging mode is inexpensive and allows reliable sealing of the ink cartridge, and therefore, it is applied to a large number of ink cartridges. Further, unsealing (opening) of the ink supply opening and the atmospheric communication opening is carried out by a user directly stripping off the sealing member.
However, in consideration of an increase in pressure of an interior of the ink cartridge, resulting from environmental variation at the time of the distribution, there are cases in which adhesion or thermal bonding of the sealing member may be carried out strongly. In these cases, the user needs to strip off the sealing member with larger power, and as a result, the sealing member may be burst-removed from the ink cartridge with great force. As a result, there is a possibility that the ink sealed in the ink cartridge by means of the sealing member may be scattered and may hang (fly) to the user's body or surrounding things.
As the technology that prevents scatter of ink from the ink cartridge as described above, for example, the technique described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2003-267438 (patent document 1) is known. According to the technique described in patent document 1, as shown in FIG. 11, an ink supply opening is covered by a cap and the cap is bonded to a housing body of the ink cartridge. In the ink cartridge having the above-described structure, when the ink supply opening is unsealed (opened), the bonded portion is sheared off by rotating the cap on the ink supply opening with the central portion of the ink supply opening being as an axis, and subsequently, the cap is removed. To this end, no cubical expansion of the interior of the ink cartridge occurs at the time of unsealing the cap. Further, since the cap is removed after the bonded portion is sheared off, there is no possibility that the ink supply opening is unsealed in burst. Moreover, by a structure in which no clearance between the ink supply opening and the cap is formed, a scheme of reducing an ink which freely exists inside the cap before unsealing as far as possible is carried out.
However, in the technique described in patent document 1, when the ink supply opening is unsealed, an operation of twisting the cap is necessary. Many users hold the side surfaces of the housing body of the ink cartridge with one hand and grasp and twist the cap with the other hand. In this case, at the moment that the bonded portion is sheared off, stronger force is applied to the side surface of the housing body. Therefore, the side surface of the housing body is pushed, so that ink may overflow from the ink supply opening. As a result, there exists a problem that the ink may hang to the user's body or surrounding things. Even if the housing body is held with a small force as far as possible so as not to cause overflow of the ink from the ink supply opening, there is a possibility that the viscosity of the ink may decrease depending on the ambient temperature and the ink may overflow outside.